There’s an old saying that suggests plan A is always easier than plan B.
While it’s intended to warn us against procrastination, because what you are faced with when you put off your duty will not be as easy as facing responsibilities today, it also speaks to those who are unwilling to face the financial realities that are facing taxpayers today.
While local governments have had to deal with these issues for years, at the “higher” levels of government, we have to wonder if they even recognize that plan Z is not a good idea.
Garden City is currently showing what our communities have had to face for several years now.
Out there they are raising the mill levy and cutting jobs.
Now, let’s be honest, neither of those options is going to be popular.
The intent is to balance the school district budget, and so all of the tax payers will see their mill levy increase by two mills.
While that will be unpopular, the district is also cutting 27 jobs through attrition — in other words, when someone quits, their position won’t be filled.
Again, let’s be honest. The private sector, in Kansas at least, has been doing that since the economic bust in the mid-1980s. Many sectors of private enterprise in Kansas operate on a skeleton of the crews that were once on the payroll.
Nothing new here.
It wasn’t popular then. Why would it be popular now? The advantage is, people are getting called into an office to be told to clear out their desk.
The choices in Garden City are apt to be unpopular, and that’s easy to understand. We live in unpopular times. But tough choices have to be made, just like those that had to be made in the private sector, and that continue to be made there, too.
Again, what is unfortunate is that the “higher” you go in government, the less they seem to understand these realities.
— Chuck Smith